Gray water recovery and reuse devices have been in operation for many years. Recent events in the State of California and elsewhere have shown the need for legalization of gray water and its devices. Gray water recently became legal in the State of California and it was quickly realized that the devices would need to be fully automatic to be accepted by the consumers and the various health agencies involved with gray water. The devices would need to be fully automatic. After a pilot program, this fact became very obvious. Problems centered around the cleaning of the filter necessary to remove many of the particles from the gray water. The cleaning or even the discarding of the filter became a concern to the various health agencies and a nuisance to the consumer. It was also realized that in many future circumstances, the possibility existed that a home equipped with the ability to use gray water would fall into disuse by the new homeowners who would tire of the expense and problems associated with caring for a system which required the cleaning of the filters manually.
Our device has been designed with such thoughts in mind. The device can be operated as a fully automatic system. It uses two filters and two pumps. The filters do not need replenishing of the filter media. The two filters are backwashed automatically on a timed schedule and so do not require daily cleaning and maintenance. An annual inspection of the system is all that is required in the way of normal maintenance. Such a system will reduce the nuisance factor found in other systems which are not fully automatic, and eliminate the replenishing of the filter media in the systems which are fully automatic. It will reduce the concern of the various health agencies over the care and maintenance of other systems and the various potential health problems that may arise.
Searches of the prior art done for us by others uncovered the following United States patents as background.
______________________________________ Call 3,112,497 Water System Drager 3,188,656 Apparatus . . . Waste Water Jennings et al 3,318,449 Water Reuse System Boester 3,543,294 Household . . . System Reid 3,594,825 Water . . . System Olson 3,915,857 Method . . . Conserving Water McCormick 4,162,218 Water Reuse System Toms 4,197,597 Water . . . Solids . . . Removal Medrosso 4,358,864 Combination . . . System Houghton 4,924,536 System . . . Water . . . Building White 4,986,905 Distribution . . . Irrigation Rosenblatt et al 5,035,011 Self Draining . . . System Burkhardt 5,059,330 Gray Water . . . Apparatus Humphrey 5,114,586 Sanitation System ______________________________________
In addition, we enclose a one sheet sketch of a type of gray water treatment system which we are informed is currently in use in California, U.S.A. To our knowledge, none of these above listed patents or references discloses or suggests the water reuse control system described and claimed herein.